# BETA-TEST release of LambdaMOO version 1.8.0beta3

Pavel Curtis (pavel@parc.xerox.com)
Mon, 19 Feb 1996 22:42:13 PST

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    I have made another *beta-test* release of version 1.8.0 of the LambdaMOO
    server in the usual place:

    	ftp://ftp.parc.xerox.com/pub/MOO/LambdaMOO-1.8.0beta3.tar.Z

    This is a still a BETA TEST release of the server, which implies that not many
    people have yet tried it in a production setting and that it may not be as
    stable as a normal, production release of LambdaMOO.

    Because very few bugs (and *no* major bugs) were reported in the beta2 release,
    I am making beta3 be a candidate for the final, production release.  I would
    appreciate it if as many production MOOs as possible would consider trying out
    this release, preferably by switching over normal operations from whatever
    version you were previously using.

    PLEASE NOTE, however, that it is *not* possible to use a DB file written by
    1.8.0beta3 and use it with any pre-1.8.0beta release; it's a one-way switch.

    ALSO NOTE that, before you upgrade to this release, you should read carefully
    through all of the entries in ChangeLog.txt since the release you were
    previously using; any entry marked with the string `NOTE' carries a procedure
    you must follow *before* trying to run on the new release.

    Please continue to send your bug reports to the main MOO-Cows mailing list.  As
    before, critical bug fixes will either be posted to MOO-Cows-Announce or else
    released in later beta releases.  If there are no significant bugs reported in
    the next couple of weeks, I will make the final, production release of 1.8.0.

    Thanks in advance for your help in testing out this release!

    	Pavel

    Here's the ChangeLog.txt entry for this release:
    -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Version 1.8.0beta3, 18 February 1996
    -- Once more liberalized parsing of floating-point numbers, this time not to
       require any digits *after* the decimal point if there are digits *before*
       it.  Thus, `32.' is now parsed identically to `32.0' and `32.e1' is parsed
       identically to `32.0e1'.  (Thanks to Brian Buchanan for pointing out this
       remaining inconsistency with the behavior of tofloat().)
    -- Added built-in function `value_hash(X)', which returns a 32-character
       hexadecimal string equal to `MD5(toliteral(X))', where MD5 is a well-known
       cryptographically secure hash function.  In essence, if
       `equals(value_hash(X), value_hash(Y))' then you can be pretty damned sure
       that `equals(X, Y)', even if the two hashes were computed on different
       machines.  Also added `string_hash(X)', which just computes the MD5 hash of
       the contents of the string X, and `binary_hash(X)', which does the same for
       the binary string X.
    -- Fixed `toint(X)', where X is a string denoting a floating-point number, to
       return the same as `toint(tofloat(X))'.  (Thanks to Kai Storbeck for
       suggesting this.)
    -- Fixed bug in `floatstr(X, PREC)' where PREC was allowed to be negative.
       (Thanks to `slayer' for reporting this bug.)
    -- Changed parser to replace calls of the form `call_function("foo", ...)'
       with simply `foo(...)' if `foo' is a known function.  (Thanks to Don Schwarz
       for suggesting this.)
    -------------------------------------------------------------------------------